The Gourmez

I’m always excited to see what our creative chefs come up with when challenged, and the folks behind the 2010 Bull City Vegan Challenge are running a new one for the month of October. Much like the first, several Durham restaurants have agreed to come up with one vegan dish to compete for the votes [...]

2nd Annual Triangle Chef Showdown at the NC Chef’s Academy 2001 Carrington Mill Morrisville Website Two weeks ago, I attended the second annual Triangle Chef Showdown, which was a combination of a fundraiser for the Central and Eastern North Carolina Food Bank, an open house for the NC Chef’s Academy, and a competition between four [...]

Fall Menu at the Fairview Dining Room (and a glimpse into the presidential suite!) Fairview Dining Room Washington Duke Inn 3001 Cameron Blvd. Duke Campus, Durham Entrees: $19—$30 Website As you may recall, I was invited to try the spring menu at the Fairview Dining Room last March. Last Thursday, I previewed the fall menu [...]

One of the largest foodie events is the Triangle is coming up in Chapel Hill in a month, TerraVITA! It takes place over three days, November 1-3, 2012. TerraVITA features “some of the finest biodynamic and organically grown wines and microbrews in the world with some of the very best North Carolina chefs, known and [...]

City Kitchen Media Dinner Website Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a complimentary dinner at City Kitchen for media types, which I am occasionally considered thanks to my WRAL Out and About posts. This dinner was put on by Giorgios Bakatsias himself, owner of the Giorgios Hospitality Group and a man who has [...]

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the media preview event before the grand opening of the Cookery’s new Front Room. The Cookery, as you may recall from when I attended their open house last year, is an incubator for small food producers, providing kitchen use for folks selling all sorts of food products, [...]

Last Thursday, I was invited along with a banquet hall’s worth of other food media and industry folks and Carolina Inn sponsors, to a complimentary event welcoming Chef James Clark to the Carolina Inn. Chef Clark took up the role of executive chef for the Carolina Crossroads restaurant in June. Per the press release, he’s [...]

It’s been two years since my last update on hunting for the perfect trivia spot in our corner of the Triangle, and that’s because we thought we had found a winner at the West 94th Street Pub, conveniently located just down the road from my house. Their trivia was on Wednesday nights. It had the [...]

About two weeks ago, I was invited out with other food and drink industry types to come for a special wine tasting at the Angus Barn. It was the second event in a tour promoting Virginian wares to their neighbor to the south: us. The first was a Virginian wine and food event at Fullsteam [...]

Fire in the Triangle Round 6 Mia Francesca versus 518 West Last night was the sixth round of the Fire in the Triangle competition. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a six-week-long culinary adventure pitting sixteen chefs of our prized restaurants against each other. All of the ingredients for the battle come in on one [...]